Library News

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver call number, 2nd floor: PS 3561 I496 P65 1998

I think what I like about this book most is that it has everything: drama, comedy, coming-of-age stories, cultural conflicts, history. The Poisonwood Bible is the story of a family who travel to the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s so that Nathan Price can be a missionary. The story is told from the perspective of his wife and four daughters, giving you a multi-dimensional look at this increasingly dysfunctional family. As the novel progresses, you see how each of the daughters and their mother has a different reaction to the Congo and Africa as they grow up. Complicating the family’s problems with each other is the fact that there are strong cultural clashes between the Price family and the villagers. The book is full of episodes demonstrating how American ways of doing things just don’t work in the Congo. The Price family also has to contend with the Belgian Congo throwing out its colonial overlords and become an independent nation while they’re there.

This article was contributed to Library News by Annie Smith, Electronic Resource Librarian.

The Library will be closed for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, May 24-26. If you need materials, be sure to make it here before 5:00 p.m. on Friday May 23, or come at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday May 27. Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

A month has come and gone since the Book-Swap Rack assumed its place near the Circulation Desk, and it appears that many individuals have taken advantage of this service in swapping out desirable titles. Library staff has donated paperback books from their personal collections, and one notable manager has bought a variety of titles from the local Deseret Industries to add to the offerings on the rack. Among the titles available as of May 20^th, a variety of genres stand on the rack, including westerns, thrillers, mysteries, classics, adventures, and romances. Come to the library to see what is available. Bring a paperback of your own to swap for a title that interests you. If you have multiple paperbacks you are willing to share, please feel free to add them to our Book-Swap Rack so others in our campus community can enjoy a wider array of options for their summer-reading pleasure.Below is a list of a few of the titles and authors currently available for swapping:

• We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark
• Loves Music, Loves to Dance by Mary Higgins Clark
• The Rainmaker by John Grisham
• The End of War by David L. Robbins
• A Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger
• The Song of the Gladiator by Paul Doherty
• Hide and Seek by James Patterson
• London Bridges  by James Patterson
• The Taboo Scarf and Other Tales of Therapy by George Weinberg
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Woods by Harlan Coben
• Stony Man: America’s Ultra Covert Intelligence Agency by Don Pendleton
• You Belong to Me by Mary Higgins Clark
• The Perfect Mistress by Betina Krahn
• Midnight Magic by Betina Krahn
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas
• Howards End by E.M. Forster
• Home Again by Kristin Hannah
• When Lightning Strikes by Kristin Hannah
• Divide and Conquer by Tom Clancy
• Net Force by Tom Clancy
• Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
• A Deadly Breed by Caroline Burnes
• Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods by Budd Hopkins
• Remembrance by Danielle Steel
• Beyond Recognition by Ridley Pearson
• The Boston Stranglers by Susan Kelly
• San Francisco by A.R. Riefe
• The Face by Dean Koontz
• Westward the Tide by Louis L’Amour
• The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• A Calculated Risk by Rae Foley
• One-Eyed Dream by Terry C. Johnston
• The Underground City by H.L. Humes
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead
• The Short Forever by Stuart Woods
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Jealousy by Alan Robbe-Grillet
• Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
• Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
• Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
• The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela

Bring a book and take a book. It’s that simple, plus it promotes contemporary green initiatives of reducing, reusing, and recycling. If necessary we can always bring out a second rack should the first one become over crowded.

This article was contributed to Library News by Spencer Jardine, Instruction and Reference Librarian.

 

The Enders Hotel: a Memoir by Brandon Schrand, F754 S6 S37 2008

This review was contributed by Joan Juskie, Library Assistant in Serials and Library News Editor. Library News welcomes summer reading contributions.

Brandon Schrand was one of the featured readers at this year’s Rocky Mountain Writer’s Festival, and his reading from his memoir prompted me to read the entire book. It is a very interesting recollection about growing up in the Enders Hotel in Soda Springs, Idaho during the 1980’s. People and place descriptions in the book are wonderful.

Descriptions and experiences with people include a number of unique characters: the boxer, the ex-con, the ex-professor, the trapper, the artist, the Texans, and more. With $17. a night rooms, the place attracted some interesting people. Sometimes when they left they would leave their belongings behind, which were put in the “suitcase room” in the basement. Imagine young boys having the adventure of going through these in search of treasures.

For me, however, the place and experience were the more compelling interest of the book. Imagine a childhood where you grow up eating all of your meals in a cafe! Geyser Hill and other wild areas were nearby. Imagine exploring the basement of a building constructed in 1917, with stairways which led to nowhere (probably a remnant of trap doors in prohibition days.) Imagine finding an old menu in the basement which listed coffee at $ .05 a cup!

The book is made up of short chapters which make it a great, easy summer reading book. It has also inspired me to make a day trip to Soda Springs to explore the hotel and city now that I have shared these memories of it.

Wide Sargasso Sea / Jean Rhys

PR6035.H96 W5 1999

For Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre fans: Wide Sargasso Sea presents a prequel to the story of Jane Eyre in which we are introduced to the character of Bertha, Mr. Rochester’s wife. The setting takes place on the Caribbean Islands of Jamaica and Dominica during the early 19^th century. Readers will learn the circumstances of Rochester’s marriage to Bertha that were briefly alluded to in Jane Eyre’s story. The novel also explores the Island Culture that was created by the institution of slavery and the social and economic repercussions that take place after England ended the importation of slaves.

This book review was contributed by Loretta Zuber, Library Assistant in the Idaho Health Science Library.

The library has several new displays up, so come by and look at the ones that interest you most. The first floor has two on the Nursing Profession, the second floor has three on publications during the past year that Kasiska College of Health Professions faculty and staff have achieved, and the third floor has Bike to Work/Bike Safety and Stress Relief through exercise. Read more and see more pictures… (more…)

Summer is the perfect time to explore fiction and the fun nonfiction that you rarely have enough time to read. Library News will try to feature one book each week that an Oboler Library staff member or user recommends. Annie Smith, Electronic Resources Librarian, has contributed our first recommendation.

These is my words, by Nancy Turner

I discovered this fictional journal of a young woman travelling with her family to the Arizona Territory in the 1880s and just fell in love with the story. The young woman, Sarah Prine, is strong, resilient, and one of the joys of this book is that you get to watch her grow as she copes with Indian attacks, the Arizona desert, outlaws, her cattle ranch, love, and family. The book is told in the form of a diary, and covers 1881 to 1901. You get to see Sarah grow from a young girl who doesn’t know much about anything except her tough life as a pioneer daughter to a wise, independent woman. But what makes this book sparkle is watching the relationship develop between Sarah and the love of her life, Captain Jack Elliot. I don’t want to say too much, for fear of ruining the ending, but their love story is one of the most beautiful that I’ve ever read.

If you want to stay updated with new entries on Library News, but don’t want to have to remember to look it up, you’ll be happy to know that you can now subscribe to this feed using Bloglines, My Yahoo, Google, Live Bookmarks, or Microsoft Office Outlook.

At the bottom of the Library News page, you’ll find a message that Library News is powered by Word Press Entries (RSS), Click on RSS and you get a pull down menu for the above mentioned subscribers. Click and finish and then you can look forward to automatically receiving information on the updates, which usually happen at least once a week.

Last week I wrote about the Summer Reading book, Enrique’s Journey, by Sonia Nazario. That prompted me to check out the book and read it. I found it mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and very relevant to the immigration issues we face today. It also prompted me to check out another book on the topic, Hyperborder: The contemporary U.S.-Mexico B0rder and Its Future. The fall activities should provide a very interesting forum for discussion and further thought.

If you can’t wait till fall to delve further into this book, you can find more information at:

2008 Reading Project home page

The Teaching Resources link has a discussion guide. Recommended Reading has some additional recommended books. There are other good links to explore on this web page.

Oboler Library Instruction and Reference Librarian Spencer Jardine recently tried out being a Roving Reference Librarian, and wrote about it in his blog. Read it and find out more about this new trend, and how it works at ISU.

I noticed this on the English Department’s Black Rock and Sage web page (http://www.isu.edu/departments/blackrock/) It’s always good to see what ISU writers are doing. Oboler Library has back issues of Black Rock and Sage if you are interested in further reading. Just check our catalog. (more…)